The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to the determination of mechanical properties of a material, and more particularly, to systems and methods related to elastography.
Elastography procedures utilize imaging technologies, such as ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to determine mechanical properties of human tissue or other suitable media. In general, conventional elastography systems measure internal displacement fields within a tissue in response to a particular applied force. The measured displacement fields are assumed to provide an estimate of strain variation within a target tissue, which is used to identify abnormalities within the tissue. For example, because normal tissues display different mechanical properties than tumors, elastography can be used to identify tumors embedded within soft tissue.
However, current elastography techniques utilize assumptions that may be unrealistic or inappropriate in practice and only provide strain maps, which are not necessarily indicative of the more relevant underlying stiffness, or modulus, of locations within a sample. Furthermore, current elastography techniques may result in poor differentiation between tissues of different modulus, poor detection of small abnormalities, and generally poor quality maps of the target tissue.